


may i feel

by thewinterose



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket (Anime 2019), Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: (a bit but not too much), (but not the sexual kind), F/M, Introspection, Kyo-centric, Light Angst, Pining, Toxic Masculinity, Voyeurism, a bit word-vomity i'm not entirely sure what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 22:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19981489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterose/pseuds/thewinterose
Summary: Her small hand is curled up against her chest, tucked in by the hollow of her throat. Her fingers skimming her collarbones. Her eyelids are fluttering lightly, her dark lashes stark against the porcelain backdrop of her face. Her peaches and crème complexion. And the small, near invisible freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose and nothing else.He wonders how she got them.Or:Kyo watches Tohru sleep and thinks.





	may i feel

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not super sure what this is but i liked it so i'm posting it. title taken from the poem "may i feel, said he" by ee cummings, who, for some reason, and despite the fact that the poem in question is specifically about sex and not whatever this turned out to be, always inspires me to write kyoru. i'm not really sure why. 
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> p.s. kyo has a teeny bit of unresolved toxic masculinity in this that leads him to think of emotions and femininity and equate them with weakness bc this is set before the true form arc and much of his development. this is also why he refuses to refer to tohru by name, even within his own thoughts.

She fell asleep on the couch again.

She does that sometimes, when the exhaustion over cleaning up after three men gets to her and she resigns herself to her often-neglected human impulses. She’d lie down on the cushions, her eyelids drooping, blinking slowly and then not at all. Asleep. Like she was now.

Not that he would know, though.

Kyo shoulders his gym bag down, dropping it by the entryway. The sweat from his workout was cooling on his chest, the draft from the house creating a certain chill. If he was cold then he couldn’t imagine how she felt, lying on the couch like that without a blanket.

Kyo approaches her slowly, his steps soft, hesitant to wake her and yet with the intention of doing so. He reaches out and settles his hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

“Hey,” he calls out, his voice soft. She doesn’t move.

He rolls his eyes and shakes her again, a bit harder, her slight shoulder shifting in the direction of his fingers. Soft and pliant.

Kyo sighs in frustration, stopping himself. She obviously isn’t going to wake up by his prompting.

Suddenly, he feels an acute and unfortunate sense of déjà vu. Looking at her as she did now brings him back to a similar scene. Except, instead of her sleeping on a couch, she was lying on the porch, her skin warm from the setting evening sun under his palm. And instead of wearing gym clothes he was… well, he was wearing gym clothes. But still. It’s different and the same, and Kyo doesn’t feel the need to draw comparisons. He shoves the memory from his mind, his tongue reflexively curving around the words _“I’m sorry.”_ Apologies that didn’t need to be repeated.

He sighs, exhaling the weight that lingered and crushed his chest if he let it, and drops down in front of her, his chest level with the wooden coffee table.

He reaches up and scratches at it, careful not to lean against the cushions. Careful not to do anything that would disrupt the peace. Her peace. His.

Unwittingly, he turns around, settling his gaze on her sleeping form.

It’s so strange. So, so strange.

Kyo has always been consciously aware of the fact that she was a girl. Uncomfortably aware, sometimes. It was obvious in nearly everything that she did.

Like those ribbons she’d wear in her hair. Or the clothing she wore; bright and flowy and girlish. Or the music she would play in her room and the light thumps of her footsteps accompanying it; signs that she was dancing to it, making her own strange, torturously vivid music that would amuse Shigure and embarrass him.

But now.

Somehow, she seems even more so.

Her small hand is curled up against her chest, tucked in by the hollow of her throat. Her fingers skimming her collarbones. Her eyelids are fluttering lightly, her dark lashes stark against the porcelain backdrop of her face. Her peaches and crème complexion. And the small, near invisible freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose and nothing else.

He wonders how she got them. Whether they were natural or a by-product of too much time spent in the sun. He doesn’t have any. He only ever seems to tan instead of burn.

Kyo allows his eyes to drift down, settling on her chin. Loose and slack. Her mouth above it slightly parted and plush. Her lips are pursed and glossy, a hint of maybe-red from that lipgloss that he knows that she loves so much. The same one that she buys every time she goes grocery shopping. That one small luxury she affords herself.

_“Why do you keep buying that?”_ He had asked once. It seemed so out of character for her to do so. For her to reach out every time for something that was so inconsequential and-

Well, and girly.

Her eyes were bright and doe-like when she answered. Her lips already glossy and tinted.

_“It tastes like cherries!”_ she said simply, and he remembers trying very hard to forget that she did.

He can see her teeth through her parted lips, stark and white against their tinted color. And behind them, her tongue, a lighter shade than the red-pink of her mouth, but only slightly so.

Her breaths puff out through her lips, soft and inaudible, warming his chin and- when did he get so close? He doesn’t remember.

His eyes drift down to her sleeping form, simultaneously self-protective and languid. Relaxed with sleep, yet guarded, somehow.

Her arms are tucked in close to her chest, the slight curve of her breast visible above them and yet skimmed over quickly by reluctant eyes.

The dip of her waist seems highlighted with her lying as she is. With her knee brought up against her stomach and her toes curled. The curve of her hip accentuated.

He can feel the heat of his cheeks, the intensity of his gaze. She looks so small. So soft. So pliant.

So helpless, somehow, and it burns him to think of her that way. To think of her in any way that implied vulnerability and neediness and femininity. In any way that required protection, because she didn’t need it. She was capable and deceptively strong. And yet-

And yet-

He thinks of her dark-haired cousin. Of his leering and his proximity and his slick, cutting smirk that reached inside him and stirred something ugly and snarling. Something dark. Something ultimately protective.

Kyo tears his gaze away and buries his face down to his knees, letting the hard bone dig into his cheeks.

He doesn’t have the right. He doesn’t have a single, goddamn right to feel that way. To think that way. To do anything, even, for her.

His eyes burn with the impulse to look at her but he refuses to let himself.

It’s so easy to forget when he’s with her. When she’s talking. When she’s smiling. When she’s there. But he can’t. He can’t let himself.

_She_ won’t let him.

The sound of shifting and a broken off half-sigh directs his gaze back to her despite his best intentions.

He can see her face moving, her lips parting and her teeth exposed, her eyes scrunching up with the surrounding skin becoming wrinkled.

Her arms move from her chest and stretch above her head, her legs uncurling and straightening. A sleepy half-sigh, half-moan escapes her lips and Kyo forces his gaze away from her, digging his fingers into the fabric of his sweatpants. Ashamed, ashamed, ashamed.

Watching a girl sleep was something Shigure would do. Not him.

Apparently.

She shifts again and he looks back at her, watching hesitantly as her eyes flutter open, as her mouth flexes, as awareness bleeds into her expression.

He expects her to be upset. To question him. To ask why the fuck he was watching her sleep like a goddamn pervert. But instead her eyes settle on his and a slow, sleepy smile spreads across her face. Unstartled. The image of radiance.

“Kyo-kun,” she whispers softly, her fingers moving towards him, her eyes dewy and doe-like.

He doesn’t know what to say or how to respond or what to do, even, so he just stares at her and croaks out, “Hey.”

Her smile widens and she sits up, stretching her arms above her head, her features relaxed and content.

He wants to ask her something. Like how her nap was. He thinks he should, but he doesn’t know how.

She turns to him, her gaze more alert. “Are you hungry?” she asks.

He shakes his head, managing that much. “I ate.”

She frowns, only slightly, a little guilty, and it twists something inside of him. “Did you?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t.

“Oh okay,” she says, swinging her legs over the couch and standing up. Her hands drift down to straighten her skirt and pull it down, and Kyo forces his eyes away, feeling enough like a voyeur already.

The thought makes him uncomfortable and he stands up, refusing to look at her, maneuvering himself around her reaching, outstretched fingers to walk away.

“I’m going upstairs,” he calls out before running up to his room and slamming the door shut behind him. He doesn’t look back at her.

He walks over to his futon and lies down in it, burying his face in his pillow, feeling very tired. Feeling very exposed.

He closes his eyes and the image of her sleeping face is burned into his eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> "may i feel, said he"
> 
> no, said kyo. 
> 
> because feelings are for well-adjusted people and we don't let our self have them.


End file.
